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Hand delivered a gift from Chennai to Mumbai

From the inception of tinysurprise there is one thing which has never changed. Our intention and effort to wow our customers. I am sure there might have been several instances where our customers were either dissatisfied with our time of delivery or with product quality. Even in those cases we tried to find a suitable solution for that customer either by providing a compliment or a refund or a simple sincere “Sorry”.

Here is a small story of how we overcame some circumstantial challenges to provide the sort of “service” we actually aspire to provide everyone – beating the odds and pushing our benchmark !

A very regular customer of ours came to us on March 26th asking us to prepare him a very “unique” gift that he wants to give his sister in Nagpur on April 2 ( his sister was leaving the country on April 2nd night). He wanted us to deliver the gift to his friends place in Nagpur. The customer was scheduled to travel from Bangalore to Nagpur via Mumbai on April 2nd morning and hence wanted to pick this gift from his friends place and give it personally to his sister. We suggested several ideas and he finalized these two

Our designers and product managers got on to work and they had the product ready by end of 28th March. Preparing the junk hamper took some time as we had to get every “imported” junk the lady loved. Everything was packed safely and gift wrapped. We were planning to ship those products by 29th March via bluedart express hoping that it would reach his friend by 31st March. And there was one day buffer in case things go wrong. But fate had other ideas ! On 29th march evening bluedart server went down completely for some customers in South India. We couldn’t generate AWB and hence we couldn’t ship. We spoke to bluedart about this and they confirmed it. They said they will get it solved by 30th morning . The parcel was so huge (volumetric weight of 50 Kgs) that we weren’t able to find any reliable alternative to immediately ship them. We decided to wait for the things to get resolved the next day morning. One one side all our shipments have been stranded including this big one. On other side we had to manage irate customers who were all worried about their shipment. Unlike other e-commerce companies we can’t deliver a product a day late ( the curse of gifting :))

The next day went as usual and things started looking bad. Bluedart didn’t fix the problem and were screwed. Our customer started doubting whether the parcel would reach him on time. He has spent a lot – we had spent a lot of time,effort and money as well. One of our customer support employees Mr.Hari ( who manages our Kochi branch now) suggested something out of the blue.

Vijay, Why don’t we get a train ticket to one of our delivery guys and ask them to take this product to Mumbai ! Anyway the customer is traveling to Nagpur via Mumbai on April 2nd. We can give this product to him in Mumbai itself.

It was a terrific moment for all of us to think of doing something like this. We loved the idea but we had our doubts.Will our delivery guy manage the travel, take the parcel safely and deliver it in a city where he doesn’t know the place or language ? Our ever reliable delivery guy Mr. Rajmohan volunteered to take this on. We immediately checked IRCTC and got him a ticket from Chennai to Mumbai for 31st March night. We couldn’t get the return tickets immediately ( We didn’t care about it then :))

The plan was ON. I dropped Rajmohan personally on 31st night at the railway station and made sure that he was confident and comfortable for the journey. On April 2nd morning he reached Mumbai at 4.30 AM. He waited at the railway station till 8.30 AM and then called the customer who reached Mumbai by then and was driving to Nagpur . He coordinated with the customer and handed over the gifts. Meanwhile I booked his tatkal return tickets for a train at 2 PM on April 2nd. Rajmohan went around Mumbai and clicked some selfies. Some of them for you !

This whole exercise taught us one thing – we always face limitations because of our surroundings, dependencies or probably lack of skill. If we have the “intent” to fulfill the objective the whole world comes together to do it for you 🙂

PS: Actually the cost of delivering through our own person was 30% cheaper than delivering it via bluedart. And we also satisfactorily compensated Rajmohan for his efforts.

One Comment

Hahahaa! 😋 This is the best work done by tiny surprises till date for me! The best person for me who can do anything for me anytime, Thank you so much Hari, it means a lot! End of the day my sister loved it so much and pleasure all mine that it happened all because of you and your terrific team ☺️ #BestGift #Awesomeness